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A migrant seeking refuge in the US crosses the Rio Grande river with his son on shoulders, at the border towards Del Rio, Texas, US, as seen from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Sep 23, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Daniel Becerril) - 

Only a few hundred mostly Haitian migrants were left camping out under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas on Friday (Sep 24), down from nearly 15,000 people who had converged there last week as US officials ramped up expulsions to Haiti and some releases into the United States.

Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens, who has been keeping tabs on the number of people in the camp, said there were 225 people left under the bridge that connects the United States and Mexico on Friday morning.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment but on Thursday evening had said there were 5,000 people currently in the Del Rio border sector, which would include people who had been moved to federal facilities for immigration processing.

Reuters photos and videos of the camp show camping tents pitched closely together and some shelters made out of sticks and tarps.

Haitians have also set up camp on the Mexican side of the border in Ciudad Acuna, as hundreds retreated back across the Rio Grande after US officials began sending planes of people back to Haiti.

Mexican officials urged Haitians to give up hopes of seeking asylum in the United States telling them instead to return to Mexico's southern border with Guatemala to request asylum in Mexico.

US President Joe Biden has faced strong criticism in recent days over the expulsions to Haiti. Rocked by the assassination of its president, gang violence and natural disasters, some 1,401 Haitian nationals have been sent back to Haiti on 12 repatriation flights since Sunday, Sep 19. The Caribbean island is the poorest in the Western hemisphere.

On Thursday, the US special envoy to Haiti quit in protest over the Biden administration's deportations of migrants to the Caribbean nation.

That followed widespread outrage stirred up by images of a US border guard on horseback unfurling a whip-like cord against at Haitian migrants near their camp.

Most migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border can be summarily expelled under a public health order known as Title 42 that was put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic early last year.

But hundreds of other migrants, deemed particularly vulnerable or otherwise not eligible for Title 42, have been allowed into the United States to pursue their immigration claims in US court. Still others may be transferred to immigration detention, though DHS did not provide a breakdown of the diverging fates of migrants who had recently arrived in Del Rio.

On Friday, more than a hundred migrants were dropped off at a center welcoming migrants in Del Rio, according to a Reuters witness. From there most head to other destinations in the United States to reunite with family members.

Yet pressure is also growing on Biden to tighten the border, and Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) is starting to return migrants to the southern Mexican city of Tapachula so they can file asylum applications there.

"We're not taking them out of the country," INM chief Francisco Garduno told Reuters. "We're bringing them away from the border so there are no hygiene and overcrowding problems."

Haitians who made the perilous, costly journey from Guatemala to Ciudad Acuna on the Mexico-US border are skeptical about the merits of going back to a city where they had already unsuccessfully tried to process asylum claims.

Willy Jean, who spent two fruitless months in Tapachula, said if Mexico really wanted to help the migrants, it should allow them to make their applications elsewhere.

"Tapachula's really tough, really small, there's lots of people," he told an INM agent trying to persuade him to go south. "There's no work, there's nothing."

Official data from Mexico show Haitians are already far less likely to have asylum claims approved in Mexico compared with many nationalities, even if their chances are starting to improve//CNA

More than half of Australia's adult population were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Friday, authorities said, as they step up inoculations in hopes of easing restrictions while cases linger near daily record levels in Victoria.

Australia is grappling with a third wave of infections from the highly infectious Delta variant that has led to lockdowns in its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, and the capital, Canberra, affecting nearly half the country's 25 million people.

These tough curbs and a decision to shut construction sites for two weeks over the rapid spread of the virus among workers triggered anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, during the week. read more

Police arrested more than 200 on Friday for theft, drug offences and breaching stay-at-home orders, authorities said, as small groups of protesters gathered throughout the afternoon at various locations.

As most of Australia's southeast remains under strict stay-at-home restrictions, virus-free Western Australia is gearing up to host the Australian Rules Football Grand Final for the first time, in front of 60,000 fans at Perth Stadium on Saturday.

Melbourne, which had hosted every Grand Final since 1898, was the sport's spiritual home until the pandemic forced a shift to Brisbane last year.

Victoria on Friday reported one new death and 733 new infections, its second biggest daily rise in the pandemic, down from the record high of 766 on Thursday. Most cases were detected in Melbourne.

Both New South Wales (NSW) and Victorian leaders have pledged more freedom to residents once full vaccinations in people older than 16 reach 70%, expected next month. So far, 57% have been fully vaccinated in NSW, above the national average of 50.1%. Two million doses were administered in country in the last seven days.

Daily cases may have stabilised in NSW, the epicentre of the country's worst outbreak, as it reported 1,043 new infections, down from 1,063 on Thursday.

"We are seeing pleasing declines ... hopefully we will see numbers decrease in coming days and weeks," state Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said during a media briefing in Sydney.

But officials flagged any easing of curbs in NSW would be done "cautiously and moderately" when the state hits its 70% dual-dose target, around Oct. 6, to avoid spikes in cases that could overwhelm its health systems.

Even with the fast-moving Delta outbreak, Australia has largely avoided high numbers seen in many comparable countries, with some 94,000 cases and 1,208 deaths, and the death rate is lower than last year because of higher vaccination rates. (Reuters)

South Korea's call for a formal end to the Korean War is premature but the door for dialogue is open if it scraps its double standards and hostile policy, a senior North Korean official said in comments published by state media on Friday.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice not a peace treaty, leaving U.S.-led U.N. forces technically still at war with North Korea. The question of formally ending the war has become caught up in a U.S.-led effort to get North Korea to give up it nuclear weapons.

South Korea President Moon Jae-in repeated a call for a formal end to the war in an address to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. read more

Senior North Korean official Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said Moon's proposal was "interesting and admirable" but conditions were not right because of South Korea's persistent double standards, prejudice and hostility.

"Under such a situation it does not make any sense to declare the end of the war with all the things, which may become a seed of a war between parties that have been at odds for more than half a century, left intact," Kim said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.

South Korea should change its attitude and foster the conditions for a meaningful discussion on ways to end the conflict and improve ties, she said.

"What needs to be dropped is the double-dealing attitudes, illogical prejudice, bad habits and hostile stand of justifying their own acts while faulting our just exercise of the right to self-defence," Kim said.

"Only when such a precondition is met, would it be possible to sit face to face and declare the significant termination of war and discuss the issue of the north-south relations and the future of the Korean peninsula."

North Korea has for decades been seeking an end to the war but the United States has been reluctant to agree unless North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons.

TALKS STALLED

Expectations were raised that a declaration on ending the war, even if not an actual treaty, would be made during a historic summit between then U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jung Un in Singapore in 2018.

But that possibility, and the momentum on talks that those two leaders generated over three meetings, came to nothing. Talks have been stalled since 2019.

Moon, a liberal who has made improving ties with North Korea a priority, sees ending the war as a way to nudge forward the effort to press North Korea to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals in return for U.S. sanctions relief.

But his call looks unlikely to break the deadlock.

He said on Friday he was confident North Korea would eventually see it was in its interests to reopen dialogue with the United States but he was not certain if that would come before his term ends next year.

"It seems that North Korea is still weighing options while keeping the door open for talks, since it is only raising tension at a low level, just enough for the U.S. to not break off all contact," he told reporters on his way home from New York.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in his own U.N. address that he wanted "sustained diplomacy" to resolve the crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.

North Korea has rejected U.S. overtures to engage in dialogue and the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog said this week that its nuclear programme was going "full steam ahead".

North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song said on KCNA earlier that the United States should withdraw its "double-standards and hostile policy" to break the deadlock. (Reuters)

Vietnam has pushed back a plan to re-open the resort island of Phu Quoc to foreign tourists until November, after failing to meet targets for inoculating residents due to insufficient vaccine supplies, state media reported.

The Southeast Asian nation, which is currently shut to all visitors apart from returning citizens and investors, has been struggling to speed up inoculations to help contain a spike in COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant in recent months.

Authorities had initially planned to allow vaccinated foreign tourists to start returning to Phu Quoc in October to revive the tourism sector and prop up the economy. read more

"We have to inoculate residents here for herd immunity but vaccine supplies are falling short," the state-run VTC newspaper quoted Huynh Quang Hung, the chairman of Phu Quoc City's People's Committee, as saying.

Last week, the island's authorities said an additional 250,000-300,000 doses were needed to achieve herd immunity.

So far only 2.9% of residents in Kien Giang, the province that hosts Phu Quoc, had received two doses, official data showed.

Overall, 7.3% of Vietnam's 98 million people are fully vaccinated - one of the lowest rates in the region.

Phu Quoc on Monday detected a new COVID-19 cluster after months with no local cases, though provincial authorities said it was under control and would not affect the reopening plan.

Authorities said Phu Quoc would have a phased reopening over six months starting on Nov. 20, with up to three chartered flights touching down per week.

Under the plan, the island expects to welcome 3,000-5,000 visitors over the trial period, with compulsory COVID-19 tests conducted by authorities, VTC said in Thursday's report.

It remained unclear if visitors will have to undergo a seven-day quarantine period as requested by Vietnam's health ministry.

Foreign arrivals to Vietnam slumped from 18 million in 2019, when tourism revenue was $31 billion, or nearly 12% of gross domestic product, to 3.8 million last year.

The plans to welcome back tourists come as Malaysia last week reopened its Langkawi island to domestic visitors, while Thailand has opened Phuket and Samui islands to vaccinated foreign tourists. (Reuters)